I currently have an Intel Pentium II 450 with 192mb ram. I’m running FreeBSD 2.2.7-RELEASE and I cant ‘cvsup’ to FreeBSD 3.0-STABLE. Could you perhaps assist me in this matter as it requires changing the kernel from a.out to ELF

I can’t really assist you that much with this question because you haven’t included any information on why you can’t use CVsup to update your version of FreeBSD (eg. Error messages, etc’¦). Without specific information there are simply too many possibilities and there is not enough space to talk about them in this column. However, I can direct you to some internet sites that may be of some assistance for your problem. The best site to go to would be www.freebsd.org, which has a searchable database plus guides, handbooks and FAQ’s. For other readers, FreeBSD is an operating system much like Linux or Unix. The reason that it is not as widely used as Windows is because it is designed for network servers and very complex to use. FreeBSD doesn’t have a Graphical User Interface (GUI) like the Windows Desktop (unless you load on a separate GUI Shell like X Windows, a version of Windows for these types of operating systems). Instead it has a command line like DOS. CVsup is a component of FreeBSD that is used to update the OS Core from the master CVS repository on a remote server. In other words, users running FreeBSD can use a client which asks the server for updates if and when they are wanted. This is a much more convenient way of updating rather than downloading the full operating system again (which is very large and time consuming). Users can manually request updates or they can set a ‘cron job’ to automatically get updates on a regular basis. Although FreeBSD is a very good and powerful operating system (this is why it is used for network servers), it is not advisable to use it unless you are very experienced with computers, are looking for a new learning experience and a challenge, and have a lot of time on your hands.